Blog from the Capital

At 3 pm Eastern, the Washington Post is hosting an online chat/Q & A with Religious Literacy author Stephen Prothero, who argues public schools should require a course in biblical literacy and a course in world religions. I posted earlier today about the Post's review of his book. And last week, Melissa Rogers pointed to this piece in the Boston Globe about his ideas. If he says anything relevant to the discussion here on church-state issues I'll post an excerpt, once again reading so you don't have to...

[UPDATE: Quoting below one of the more interesting exchanges from the chat this afternoon. One thing's for sure: Professor Prothero sure does think this should all be quite easy doesn't he? Supreme Court decisions are straightforward and simple to follow, teaching about religion without stepping into proselytizing isn't the least bit delicate or complex, and math is expendable. Voila! He also assumes we'll have no trouble with what seems to me as the most problematic distinction:

Annapolis, Md.: Do you advocate that we read religious texts such as the Bible as religious texts, or as some other kind of texts (Bible as historical document of the Jewish people, Bible as literature, Bible as philosophy, Bible as legal document)?

Stephen Prothero: Well you need to read any text for what it is. Otherwise education is just obfuscation. You need to read a novel as a novel, not as a political platform. You need to read a poem as a poem, not as an economic manifesto. So, yes, you need to read the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita or the Quran as religious texts. But that is not to say that you need to read them religiousLY. You read them objectively and academically, knowing that they are religious texts to those who hold them dear. But it's also important to see the AFTERLIFE of the Bible and other scriptures. Public school students need to come to see some of the 1300 allusions to the Bible in Shakespeare. And the uses of the Bible in the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

So, we'll just have these teenagers read the Scripture as religious text and make sure they don't read it religiously, and if they ask obvious questions about the text as religious text we'll just have the teachers (who would have to be trained in....religion, right?) give some of those simple non-controversial answers that have kept religion so free from violent turmoil these last 2000 years or so. Why haven't we thought of this before?

Am I being too obtuse here? Did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Is biblical literacy - that would require as he says reading a religious text as religious - really pretty simple, and necessary?]